for me it all depends on what the knife is used for and how it is used. After a certain basic threshold steel is generally not one of primary factors in what makes one knife good or not. There is of course endless nuance and ways to talk about it because you also have the steel itself but how it's treated, how it's formed, how its grinded, all of these things. It's hard to really talk about it without narrowing down variables. Let me say it this way though, if you have the same exact knife used the same way, the difference between lets say vg10 and 154cm/ats34 is really not anything to worry about. The steel itself only really becomes relevant in extreme cases, like say make a small edc knife that is used for a lot of abrasive tasks and it's made out of 52100 or something. Changing the steel to s90v or whatever is going to change how the tool can and likely will be used. This is also something that has to be a balance. At that point it becomes obvious to the end user that the steel itself is a limiting factor that takes precedence over other concerns like ergonomics and the blade shape and whatnot. In a kitchen knife you can use thinness to make up for a lack of abrasion resistance but only to a certain limit. The lack of "bite" which is just basically a measure of apex acuity, becomes an issue. The best blade steels are well balanced in a logical way related to how the tool will be used and maintained. The difference between does this same exact knife for the same exact use have xhp or magnacut, generally without some specific need that one material happens to cover, is not something to waste brain cycles on. Even more drastic differences are not ultimately that relevant in most uses, especially compared to other factors.
As far as preferences for steels, the issue there is it's all theoretical and thus basically useless, unless you are knife maker yourself. In the real world we have actual products that exist and are available for consumer to purchase. So I could wish for this or that to be made from this or that, but if it doesn't exist then it doesn't matter. Gotta work with what is real.
As far as what makes steel "good" for a knife blade, in the real world is a balance of factors that affect each other, but ideally in theory you would want attributes to be linearly exceptional other than one attribute, and that one attribute is the thing most knife consumers overly focus on which is abrasion resistance. Generally, more stainless is better. Finer grain is better. Tougher is better. Theoretically harder is also better. The one thing that is not so straightforward is abrasion resistance. This really just depends on the use and how it will be used. There's a reason the knives in meat packing plants aren't using s110v and it's not just economics or availability, there's actually a logic to it. In reality these attributes are in balance. If you want a knife to cut, then you want the steel to be as hard and tough as it can be so that it can be made as thin as possible. It needs some abrasion resistance, but it's not as important as many seem to think.
focusing on the abrasion thing, lets say one steel can hold a keen edge twice as long as another steel but it takes 4 times as long to do maintenance when it inevitably does go dull from abrasive wear. Which is better? It depends. That's basically the answer to everything. It depends. And the real issue is up until Larrin's blog, there really was no empirically based public sources of information about it. Like if you go to google and click on any result other than his site, chances are the "info" you see will be comically wrong, unless it's sourced from his data. Not all the info on his site is totally the last word 100% accurate either, but it's all actually based in empirical evidence and more than good enough to be used for general guidelines. Sometimes I see folks get hung up on the fact that it's only 99.9% accurate and not like 99.999% accurate thus they miss the point.
